Inseason cotton monitoring techniques have been developed, and provide a sensitive measure of crop development. TOPMAP, NAWF, and COTMAP techniques were used to follow cotton plant response to various levels of damage from Lygus and Heliothis zea during early squaring in the summer of 1992. Square retention, nodes above white flower, and yield variables from the treatments were used to explain plant response and compensation to early-season insect damage.